Wandering, Always Wandering
by ICanSeeYourFace
Summary: When he traces over the first, she can feel him stiffen. "Go on. It's right there," she encourages him, and his fingers almost trip over themselves. Clairedevil post season one fluffy goodness. Rated T just to be safe.


**A/N** : Clairedevil is slowly ruining me. It's going to be a long wait until we get season two. I began working on this fic before I had finished watching all episodes, and just hoped like hell it would work out. Lucky for me, it did, although it took a little bit of rewriting. General spoilers for the end of season one and lots of fluffy goodness. Enjoy!

 **Disclaimer** : I own nothing, Jon Snow.

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She's running late, and she hopes she hasn't lost him to the city. The whole thing was very spur of the moment, and in hindsight, Claire figures she should've realized it couldn't be as easy as she had imagined it would be. Sure, buying was easy, printing even more so. Asking one of her co-workers for help, surprisingly not that horrifying. Actually executing the damn project... She hopes like hell it will work.

The bus finally grinds to a halt at her stop, and she hurries off, clutching her bag close to her. She's been back in the city for two months and Hell's Kitchen has been relatively calm, but knowing just what can happen here, what has happened to her, walking down the streets after dark still has her a bit on edge. The apartment is only a block away, and knowing Matt, he can probably hear her already. If he's home, that is. She doesn't know from how far he can hear someone scream, or pick up on the struggle of a fight. She would rather not find out.

Her heart starts beating more wildly in her chest as she breaks into a jog to round the corner. Her eyes dart around the street, probing, assessing. Finally she lifts her gaze, and her system is flooded with relief. Lights on, a shadow walking past one of the windows.

It's a tentative thing, they've only just restarted. Keeping up a neutral facade while suturing wounds and dabbing off blood became harder each time he would crash into her small apartment. She rents it under a fake name, and he's the only one who knows the address. All of her mail now gets forwarded to a P.O box that a friend of a friend of a friend picks up for her, and...

Well, it's all a bit of a mess.

(and the crazy thing is she actually feels safer for it)

It started with polite farewell greetings. _Be safe. Thank you, Claire. Please don't crash into my dumpster again_. Continued with lingering touches, slow and overly methodical movements as his body got pieced together again, almost connections... Their first attempt at dating was so short it barely even started. Crashed and burned before they ever got to see if it could work.

The first time he stayed over was an accident. He had a nasty gash all across his back, and he apologized profusely before she almost had to tackle him onto the towel-covered couch. He was talkative at first (or as talkative as he would get), promising he would get out of her hair as soon as she was done. She ignored him, instead talking about how she felt like that mad scientist from _A Nightmare Before Christmas_ , sewing together a rag doll and then animating it. Matt had chuckled, asking if she thought he would look good in a dress.

But the more she worked, repeating her movements, fingers running over his back, the quieter he got. She didn't think much of it, even enjoying the silence as she worked over the wound. But when he didn't respond after she'd cut the thread on the last suture and declared "All done", her immediate reaction was panic. Had he lost consciousness? Was he dead? Holding her breath, she'd placed her fingers over his pulse point, relieved to find it steady.

He had fallen asleep. She didn't have the heart to wake him, so she set an alarm for 6.30, hoping that wouldn't make him late, and then washed off and went to bed. She never heard him leave in the morning, but it was the start of it. There had been a dinner, a couple of coffee dates, a few nights spent in their respective apartments. Nothing had been said, there had been no grand declarations, not yet.

Claire rings the doorbell for Matt's apartment, and he buzzes her in seconds later. Behind the closed door, she feels safer, walking slowly up the stairs to calm herself. Outside his door, she stops for a moment, assessing the surprise she has in store for him. All seems to still be in place. She is about to knock, but Matt beats her to it, opening the door and greeting her with a knowing smile. Of course he knew. She returns the smile, leaning forwards to give him a kiss on the cheek. He steps aside, holding out his hand for her to walk down to the kitchen. They sit down, having dinner in amicable silence. He's a good chef, there's always something about the food he makes that is... extra.

"Sorry I was late," she apologizes between chews. "I got held up at work."

It's not exactly a lie, and that's the key. He can hear lies, the subtle changes in the human body when someone lies. Keeping things as close to the truth as possible helps, and Claire hopes that even if he would notice something was off, he won't comment on it.

"It's okay."

Thank God.

"I was just hoping the city hadn't gone to hell so me being late would mean you'd be... out."

"I think I could've resisted the urge," he rebuts with a wicked grin.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Runs-Headfirst-Into-Danger, you want to try that again?"

They finish up, Matt insisting on clearing the table ("I have a system"). It's time. She stretches her neck, making sure joints crack. Without fail, he stops dead in his track, slowly turning around.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, back's just acting up. It's been like this for a couple of days."

"Want me to take a look?" He wiggles his fingers playfully. "X-ray fingers."

In response, Claire turns around, unbuttoning her tunic and carefully peels it off along with the camisole underneath it. He's behind her in an instant, his fingers lightly tracing her neck, searching for something that's not there. When he traces over the first, she can feel him stiffen. His index finger circles the little pebble, as if trying to coax it into telling him what it's doing there.

"Go on. It's right there," she encourages him, and his fingers almost trip over themselves.

He takes his time, making sure he deciphers every cell across the expanse of her upper back. She hunches over slightly, making her back more concave, eliminating some of the curves and valleys.

"What... What is this?" he asks finally, his voice barely a hush against her skin.

"Why don't you tell me?"

" _En ese territorio, de tus pies a tu frente, andando, andando, andando, me pasaré la vida._ "

Chills run down her spine. He's mentioned he speaks Spanish, but actually hearing him use the language is... unbelievably arousing. He still has an accent, but the intonation is pretty good. His fingers go back to the beginning, tracing the letters again. She lets out a shallow sigh, basking in the feeling of his light touch.

"In that territory..." she recites as he moves across her back, "from your feet to your brow... I want to spend life... wandering... always wandering."

Matt leans in, resting his head against her shoulders, his scruff itching her skin.

"It's from a poem by Neruda," she continues, tilting her head against his. "One of my favorites."

"It's beautiful," he murmurs, kissing her hot skin.

"It's everything..." Claire hesitates. _Oh, to hell with it..._ "...everything you are to me."

For seconds, all she can feel is his breath against her shoulder blade, warm gusts of air that give her goosebumps. Then his hands are moving, sliding to her sides, up along her arms until they find the straps of her bra, pushing them down, unhooking the clasps. She's up and off the chair in a second. They barely make it to the bed.

"I think we lost one," Matt muses later, the two of them lying motionless in bed, his fingers tracing the text on her back, "because this right here..." He strokes his finger over a block of cells. "...I think it now means 'vine'. What are these?"

"Adhesive rhinestones."

The expression on his face is something between surprise and amusement. Claire can't help but laugh. She coaxed a co-worker into aiding her in seducing a blind man with rhinestones and Pablo Neruda.

"I, uh... I have very little experience with adhesive anything that isn't tape, but I am fairly certain adhesive rhinestones should not have survived this well through what we just did."

"I..." she hesitates, because saying it out loud just makes it sound ridiculous.

"What did you do, Claire?" he presses, sounding somewhat worried. "Please, don't tell me it's superglue."

"It's not superglue. Jeez, do you know how bad that stuff is? I used eyelash glue."

"You-" He can't even bring himself to finish the sentence, instead he bursts out laughing, his eyes alight with mirth. It may be one of the most beautiful things she's ever seen.

"Do you have any idea how you're going to get rid of these? Again, I am not familiar with adhesive rhinestones and absolutely not with gluing stuff to my body."

Claire rolls around onto her back, wrapping the cover around herself before sitting up. "Take it from someone with extensive knowledge of gluing stuff to surfaces they were not meant to be glued to. Nail polish remover is your best friend."

With that, she pads off, finding her purse next to the stairs. If nothing else, she came prepared, and she finds the small bottle of remover in her purse. A quick trip to the bathroom for a couple of q-tips, and she hurries back to bed, almost jumping back into it.

"Will you do the honors?"

"I'd be crazy not to."

She hands him the bottle and the q-tips, and he pulls down her covers to expose the improvised braille text. Hearing him work, and feeling the cold cotton tip work over her back, patiently dabbing the small crystals until they come off, is intimate. Not in the same way as before, of course. This is tender and sweet, a good start to something even better. Suddenly, Matt is right next to her, his voice a whisper:

"Please, do this again."

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 **A/N** : The poem Claire quotes is Pablo Neruda's "The Infinite One".

Review to make a hobbit's day! :)


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